If someone gave me the choice of picking just one media player to take to a deserted island, I would most definitely plonk for VideoLan’s [NO LONGER WORKS] VLC Media Player. I really don’t know whether I would get too much of a chance to watch anything while I am marooned there, but when it comes to versatility, no other player comes close. Thank God! VLC Media Player is free. It is Open Source and cross-platform too.

That VLC pretty much plays everything that you throw at it is old news. It is also a media genie when it comes to other things apart from playing movies. We looked at some of them in two previous posts:

But there are still some ‘top secret’ features left to talk about. So, let’s spill the beans.

Use VLC as an Online Video Downloader for YouTube

Using a combination of VLC and your browser, you can download videos from YouTube and a few other video sites. Copy the URL of the video you want to download. For instance, in YouTube it could be like this:

1. Click on Media – Open Network stream. Paste the URL and click the Play button in the player.

2. VLC Media Player starts streaming the video. Now, click Tools – Codec Information and at the bottom of the window you will see a Location box. Copy the long URL in the box and paste it on your browser’s address bar. The browser will now start playing the video file. You can download the video file to your desktop by doing a Save As…. Or you can choose to record the video.

I tried this out with YouTube. Let us know in the comments about other services too.

Don’t Forget…VLC Can Play Audio Too!

We normally associate VLC with video, but VLC is a complete media player and that includes full music-playing features with playlist support. VLC not only displays cover art, but also has a pretty good graphic equalizer tucked away inside it.

You can bring it up with a CTRL+E. Pitch your song just right with the available presets, or finetune it with the 11 frequency bands.

The latest VLC also gives you Dynamic Range Compression that subdues loud sounds or amplifies quiet sounds by compressing an audio signal’s dynamic range. That’s just the thing if you are living in an apartment with thin walls.

Then there’s Audio Normalization

Just in case you don’t jump out of your skin, VLC has the normalization feature tucked deep inside Audio preferences (Tools – Preferences – Audio). It’s a feature to keep in mind when you are playing audio and video files; a sudden increase in the volume could jar your ears. In case of video, you have to restart the video for it to take effect.

Record Directly From Webcam

You can record your video chat session easily using VLC.

1. Go to Media – Open Capture Device.

2. On the Capture Device screen, you can select the video device and also the audio device like the system microphone.

3. You can also configure the options from the Configure settings. Finetune your capture with Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation (and other) controls.

4. Head down and drop down the Play button to open the Convert dialog where you can select the Destination file, click on the Browse button to select video file location, name and format.

Scrobble Tracks to Last.fm

Last.fm added support to VLC and that helps because you can enhance your recommendations by scrobbling from your desktop music collection to Last.fm using the VideoLan media player. Scrobbling tracks to Last.fm with what you listen to on your desktop is a simple three-step process –

1. From Tools – Preferences click the Show Settings radio button to All.

2. Drop down to Interfaces. Expand the branch to Control Interfaces – check Submission of played song to Last.fm.

3. Expand Control Interfaces and click on Audioscrobbler. Enter your login details on this screen, hit save and restart VLC.

Mouse Gesture Interactions with VLC

Productivity mavens like their mouse gestures, and VLC media player obliges with basic mouse gesture support. To activate this feature, go to View – Add Interface – Mouse Gestures. You may need to restart VLC for the changes to take effect. The list of supported gestures and settings options can be on this page of the VideoLAN wiki.

Automatically Quit VLC When Playback Is Over (And Shut down The Computer)

Queue your songs in a playlist (Kenny G’s saxophone perhaps), switch off the lights, and drift off to sleep. Oh wait! Did you forget to switch off the VLC player and shut down the computer? Stay in bed because a little line of code can do it for you.

You can quit VLC media player after playback is finished, by adding

vlc://quit

to the playlist. Alternatively, from Media select Quit at the end of playlist.

Shutting down the computer is a bit more elaborate with a batch file.

Create a new file with extension .BAT [use notepad] and paste in the contents from below:

Drag your saved playlist icon on top of the .bat file. The batch file will launch VLC and load the playlist. It will wait for the playlist to finish playing and then the batch file shut down the PC in 60 sec.’s.

I end here with seven useful features of the ever-popular VLC media player. There are lots more of course. If you know about these seven features then they aren’t ‘top secret’ at all, but if you didn’t then try them out. Which feature of the VLC media player deserves to get mentioned? Do you know of a VLC feature that you think not many are aware of? Reveal it in the comments. We are all ears for secrets to be spilled.

I want to use VLC in a user activated interface in a video installation. I have to create a hotkey connected to a shortcut. The playlist, as I have understood it, is an html-file and wont't work. Is it a way to program it directly like MPC?

Hello there. Hoping for some help. Let me start out by saying I am not that computer savvy. Ok, Now that THAT is out of the way, :) I am trying to download a video from YouTube using your instructions above. I got the link and followed all of the above. I got the long URL and pasted it and it started to play. This is where I have a problem. How do I save it? I right click like I would for everything else I would want to save but it does not give me an option to save as. Am I missing something? Thanks for any help as it will be much appreciated. :)
VLC (which happens to be my initials. )

Thank you, Saikat, I played around with the original instructions after I posted the question and found that it was downloading it to the VLC player. On other video links I tried, It did give me the save option. I appreciate your blog and help with a quick response to my question. Many Thanks!

(a year later)
You sort of mean "download," but in this case you also sort of mean "capture" or "rip" or "convert."

It may help to think of wanting a cookie jar on a high shelf. You pull the jar down to get a cookie and put it back up when you're putting them away.
upload - you're sending a file UP to another server (generally to the Internet)
download - you're pulling a file DOWN to your own computer.

The media YouTube normally serves is a "stream" rather than an actual file you download and then view. VLC in this case would rip the stream and convert it to a file you could view offline at any time.

Hi, I'm brand new to VLC and I have a video that's 1.1 seconds faster than the audio. I figured out how to fix this when actually watching the video, but how do I actually save the corrected version so I can upload it to Facebook? Thanks!

I use VLC for all my media files, whether films which are on commercial release or footage I took myself using phones or digicams.

Problem now is that I can not delete any of file which is linked to VLC, even if I then change it back again. No matter how I try nothing works.

I tried hitting Delete on the keyboard, and even Shift + Delete. I get a message telling me that the file is in use or is protected. Neither of these things is happening. I try dragging and dropping the file into Trash and the same error message comes up. I even tried cutting and pasting to the trash can, and the same error message comes up. It's pissed me off no end. My drive is filling and apart from the radical solution of backing up the entire drive elsewhere, except these files, and then formating the entire PC, there is nothing I can think of now to do to get rid of them. Perhaps I can even transfer them onto a memory stick and then throw the thing away, but that's wasteful and expensive and also stupid.

Really I'd rather find a solution, which I am sure there is one, only I can't find it.

I am running Windows XP SP3. All updates and so on are valid and current.

Streaming Youtube with VLC for video downloading per your instructions worked fine for me in August, 2012. Now it will not stream. What is wrong? Has Google changed something on Youtube that prevents it?

Does VLC automaticly try to make an internet connection when it is opened? I tweeked my firewall setting to max and now it's asking me for permission to let VLC access the web. Does anyone here know? Thanks

hello i like to know how to stream a movie or video directly in vlc player for mac to watch it without having to download the video file just stream direct into vlc player so i dont have to use a browser to watch inwhich sometimes the flow is off id like to use vlc player to watch rather stream direct from my understanding it uses hardware components to make the video play smooth no buffering id like to know can i do this with vlc player for mac but i like to do it without having to download a file just stream from where the original file is based on website the video is on or linked to and then directly to vlc player for mac as the output can you tell me how to do that or if you know of a site that has that exact answer im looking for provide a link ive been looking and haven't found a answer as of yet thanks in advance for any help you can give

I have used VLC Media player for over 5 years now and it is the best media player I have ever used. I have never found any media players that come close to doing all the cool stuff that VLC can do. But I have tried to use the Network Stream option to watch a YouTube video on Debian Squeeze but I think there is a bug in that version of VLC because every time I try to open a video it spits out errors saying it can't detect the video format. But I am still learning cool things that I can do in VLC every few weeks or so. Even though I sometimes get errors, I am always going to use VLC.

The main reason i started using VLC 3 years back was its ability to double the volume, since then VLC has been my best media player. I use VLC in all of my OS and all my gadgets. Thanks for these really cool informative tips.

"If someone gave me the choice of picking just one media player to take to a deserted island, I would most definitely plonk for VideoLan’s VLC Media Player."

Hahaha, you crack me up man.

Anyway, to me VLC is a must have on any OS (maybe even mobile!!!). I think it's best quality is that it has it's own codecs and you don't have to worry about installing them separately. This is especially useful for newbie linux users that have a hard time doing that themselves.

The remote control feature is (I think) third party and also, doesn't seam to work very well on Linux.

VLC is amazing. It plays everything. Your not limited to the inferior proprietary audio and video formats. It has a GNU license, which means, it belongs to us.
Want to make it better, use it, volunteer to make changes to it and donate to the programmers/volunteers. Look at the silly little excuses where people back off, uncomfortable with not using proprietary, limiting stuff, from Microsoft and Apple.
It is very simple to use, however, if one wants to get deep into enhancing the audio or video they can. Heck, kit even encodes. Make sure you get the newest version. It is about functionality, flexibility and quality. It is not about looking pretty and limiting users, like proprietary nonsense..
I store my audio in losless FLAC format and encode that into the best compressed "lossy" format for audio Ogg Vorbis, to listen to on my Cowon portable media player.
Both are GNU licensed and are free for use and distribution. You can use them in a commercial format.
I do agree that it is good to have more than one player for various reason. There are several good ones, but none of them are made by Microsoft or Apple.

I have to say that most of these features I would never use. I have other programs that make it faster to get youtube videos and I don't care for most of the features. I only really use VLC for playing stuff my other player can't for some reason.

just have to say ive been using VLC for what 8 or 9 years now i believe? still never had the first issue with the program crashing or not playing a file. One thing i didnt notice being mentioned is despite its incredible versatility its still has a VERY small resource footprint compared to any other playback program ive found for movies, which matters a lot for older/slow computers.

VLC Media Player keeps getting better and better. The twoflower version now even enchants 10 bit encoding support, which has now never failed to play any animes or movies I throw at it. I'm really starting to be a fan of this media player :p
I know a few features here already, but a few still surprised me, like the first one. Good post by the way!
Oh, and it's very customizeable too :D

As the geek of my many circles, I convert everyone I support to VLC, simply because it just works with anything as long as you set it as default video player only. Once you set some preferences like launch full screen, and sound clipping limits, all you need to do is double click a video file and hit the space bar to go to the bathroom and again when you come back. I even had to install it at work for an Exec who wanted to present an MP4 video for a presentation and he found it was just perfect.

I would much rather use VLC, which I've used for years, than Adobe with Firefox, but your 'work around' is just too cumbersome, when I can get Adobe addon to open in Firefox with one click. What I want is a useful VLC addon for Firefox or Chrome, please!!!!

no doubt it supports almost everything but the sound and video quality of other players are better in some cases
i use it to play files that are not supported by wmp on windows
and in linux rhytmbox for common audio files

There are pros and cons with every player. That's why I think it's better to have 2-3 players in your arsenal. For instance, I play my audio files in Foobar and not in VLC. Sometimes, it's just born out of habit.

VLC can't handle Blu-ray natively as far as I know. A new version was supposed to be released with Blu-ray support, but I am not sure when. I haven't tried this but there is a workaround which you can look into:

What I don't like about VLC is that it won't let my laptop go to sleep or even dim the monitor after x number of minutes as per my power saving plan in Windows. I also dislike the (too) simple UI in general yet overly complicated options. I've tried several of the skins offered by VLC but most plain did not work and others had various quirks about them that weren't present in the default UI.

WMP (Windows' default player) serves my purpose quite well :) Very elegant player and does not require any extra codecs downloaded for my needs so no issues there. The only gripe I have with WMP is that I believe it does not support srt subtitles or very picky with them (forgot which, it's very rare that I need subtitles); for that I have VLC as a backup player which handles subtitles like a champ, and also supports more codecs out of the box, although external codecs can be easily obtained and installed on the system for WMP to use.

VLV does interfere with the power management options. I have the habit of manually dimming my monitor with the shortcut key on my laptop when I walk away. It's always advisable to keep a backup player. I, in fact have 3 - Media Player Classic and KMP. But VLC handles everything that you throw at it.

I used to use KMP, but it isn't made by the same people anymore and they added a lot of unnecessary junk. I have gone with PotPlayer, which is the new KMP made by Daum. PotPlayer is my main player now and VLC has become my backup.

I am glad that you mentioned KMP. I removed it from my system and wondered what the heck happened to it..
KMP is loaded with junk, ads and wanting you to download all sorts of crap. Thanks for letting me know what happened to it,
VLC is pure as the driven snow and it plays EVERYTHING.
Especially FLAC and Ogg on the audio side and Ogg, MP4 (is proprietary), AVI, Divx, Xvid, CDs and DVDs, VOBs, everything.

My backup player is Media Player Classic. It is sooooo fast and sooooo small. It is not as robust as VLC, but is unreal, with a free GNU

Saikat Basu

July 28, 2012 at 3:36 am

Thanks. Did not know much about PotPlayer. Will definitely try it out.

Thalia

July 30, 2012 at 5:37 pm

Same as me, I will browse for PotPlayer pros and cons and maybe using it.

Thanks GodSponge

Praveen

July 25, 2012 at 1:07 pm

You can activate subtitles in Media player with the help of the software called DirectVobSub. It has a control panel which lets you choose the font and font size and once the settings are saved it will automatically display srt files associated with the video. The software gets initialized automatically every time a video is played and remains hidden in the system tray.

Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer's garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him looking for life hacks and learning tidbits. You can find him on LinkedIn & Twitter watching over the world.